Work Place Air Quality: How Does Your Business Measure Up?

Smelling a change on the wind? You might have problems you are not aware of. It’s easy to accept a bad smell as just a bad smell, but sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes water contaminates the filters on an air conditioner, sometimes old bricks come loose and put hazardous dust particles in the air and other times, something really did crawl up there and die. Read on for information on air quality in your workplace.

Worst Affected Industries

Any indoor occupation can be affected badly by poor air quality or air pollution. The more enclosed the space, the higher the risk of low quality air. For example, offices usually have their entire air supply come through an air conditioning unit. Poorly maintained units can have dirt of even mould growing through them, which can cause serious health risks for the people inside. Other industries, especially trade industries, can have gases, petrol fumes and various dust and smoke particles floating through the air. In many cases it can become so bad that workers are forced to wear facial masks.

Common Causes

One of the most common causes of bad air quality in a workplace is simply negligence. People are unaware of the potential dangers, or the dangers seem too small or are overlooked, and they simply do nothing to prevent the quality of the air from decreasing. Poor maintenance is also directly linked. Air filtration systems must be kept at a high standard of cleanliness, but many are forgotten or ignored. Old equipment can also cause problems, with rust particles or liquid spills. Accidental spills are one of the few quality issues that will be looked into as soon as it happens. Because, unlike the other problems, it is in your face, everyone notices and recognises the problem.

Resulting Issues

Poor air quality in the workplace can have some very serious health concerns. Hay fever and asthma can be very common reactions to poor air quality in people with those conditions. Other reactions from the indoor air can range from hypersensitivity to skin irritation and even neurotoxic symptoms. Those are just from short term exposure. Long term exposure of bad quality air, with certain chemicals floating around, can directly result in cancer and respiratory problems. And those are just with an office environment.

Getting Tested

If one day you walk into work and you think for a moment that it smells a little odd, or just different than usual, then get it tested as soon as you can. It is an easy thing to just ignore and forget about, but it could be a very serious problem. Getting professionals like Air Noise Environmentto have a look is the safest option. Regular testing is also very important as most issues will remain almost totally unnoticeable until you go looking for them.